Adios from El Paso

From Gustavo Reveles, El Paso, Tejas:

A wonderful El Paso journalist and great all-around guy died last Friday. His name was John Gutierrez-Mier and I was lucky to have been his friend. John, who worked at the El Paso Herald-Post for several years until the paper folded in 1997, was a minority affairs reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He was 43 and died waiting for a heart transplant.

I met John in 2003, when we both began working at the Star-Telegram. You couldn't help but become a friend to John, who greeted every morning with a wonderful disposition and a dedication to journalism that I still envy. He was a great reporter. He had a way to make his subjects feel so comfortable, that no matter the subject, they managed to open up to him and give way for a great story. A Google search for John's name reveals great stories about some of the people that more often than not were ignored by the media: the poor, the under served, ethnic and racial minorities and the socially oppressed. If he had done else, he would have left an important legacy behind him.

But John was above all a wonderful individual. That 2003 I spent my first ever Christmas away from home. Sensing my sadness, John not only to invited me over to his apartment where all his family had gathered to celebrate, but he and his family treated me as one of their own. For that, I will always be grateful.

I had the chance to observe John in several conferences and conventions, and the one thing that always amazed me was how many people -- some of them very well-known journalists -- counted him as a friend. John had a knack for giving the people he most cared about nicknames. He fell on his Mexican upbringing to give anyone a caring term of endearment. Our friend Cythia was dubbed "La Wifa" because when they first met she was about to get married. He somehow thought our friend Joaquin's name sounded like someone was saying "walking" and so he called him "Andando" (get going, in Spanish). Alma was "Sour Sister" because of what her name means in Spanish. There was "La Beauty" and "La Francesa." He had one for me, but I won't get into it.

His services will be on Friday here in El Paso. People from throughout Texas as well as both the East Coast and West Coast will fly in. More proof of how far-reaching John's enthusiasm for journalism and life as a whole was.

Ahi te guacho, loco.